Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 120708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
I leaned back in the chair and sighed. “Wow! You must have really paid attention in the kitchen growing up. Though I have to say, I’ve never had spaghetti for breakfast before!”
Tanner laughed and pushed his plate to the side. “It wasn’t hard. It was spaghetti. And that was my mom’s homemade sauce in the freezer.”
“I want to learn to do that.”
He lifted a brow. “Make sauce?”
I nodded. “Yes. I never was able to learn things like that, since my mother passed away.”
“Your father never met anyone else?”
With a scoff, I looked down at my empty plate. Memories of women coming in and out of my life were like a blur. My father was good-looking for a man in his early fifties. Women still flocked to him like he was a twenty-something guy. Of course, the fact that he had money and was a doctor played a big role in that.
“He’s dated. A lot. But no, he’s never remarried, and I’m pretty sure he won’t. The girlfriends last until they find out Daddy has no plans of putting a ring on their finger. Then, they move on, or he gets tired of them and breaks it off. There was one I really liked. I think my father liked her too, but when she started to want to spend more time with me, he ended things with her. I hated him for months after that.”
“Why?” Tanner asked as he stood and took both of our plates.
“I guess it was because she was the first female in my life since my mother and my nanny. I was certainly craving that maternal figure. I guess he didn’t want me to have it. So, he broke up with her. From that point on, he kept the women he dated rather distant from me.”
“I’m so sorry, Timber.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is. When I have a child someday, I’m going to make sure they know what it feels like to be loved.”
Tanner smiled and placed his hand on the side of my cheek. “You’re going to make an amazing mother.”
I stared into his blue eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Tanner, I know this is probably not something a couple talks about when they’ve literally just started a relationship, but how do you feel about kids? I mean, I see you with your niece and nephew, and you’re amazing with them. Do you want kids of your own someday?”
“Hell yes, I do.”
Relief flooded through me. I hadn’t really thought much about kids before, but being with the Shaw family, I quickly realized I wanted a family of my own. One where love and laughter filled each room. “Since I’ve been spending time here with your family, seeing Morgan and Blayze, and then hearing Kaylee was pregnant, I realized that I want a family more than I thought I did.”
“Good,” Tanner said, throwing in a wink on top of his sexy smile.
The phone on the wall rang, and Tanner got up to answer it. “Hello? Nah, we’re good. We ate spaghetti for breakfast.”
I laughed and stood. Since Tanner cooked, I would clean.
Tanner was obviously speaking to his father. Something about a tractor, hooking up a plow, and the storm moving out. A part of me wanted to be stuck here forever. The cabin, as Tanner kept calling it, was beautiful, and now with the snow no longer falling, I was able to see Crystal Lake through the living room window. It was breathtaking. The mountain range beyond was just as stunning, if not more so. The snow sparkled when the sun peeked out from the clouds every so often. Kaylee had once described it as someone throwing out diamonds onto the mountains, and when the sun hit just right, they cast off beams of sparkly light. It was so beautiful I had a hard time believing it was real. Picture perfect didn’t even begin to describe the view I was looking at.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Tanner asked as he stood next to me. He grabbed a dishtowel and picked up a pot and started drying it off.
“There honestly isn’t a place on this ranch that isn’t beautiful.”
“All of Montana is like this.”
With the last dish washed, I placed it in the dish drainer and turned to Tanner. “By the way, I’ve been thinking. I’m going to need a truck for sure. And a horse trailer.”
“Okay,” he said with a chuckle. “What kind of truck?”
“The lady who owned the horse ranch back in Georgia where I first started to take lessons...she had a Dodge.”
Tanner screwed up his face and shook his head. “A Dodge! No. No girlfriend of mine is driving a…a Dodge.”
I swooned hearing Tanner call me his girlfriend. Had we really come this far in only a few short weeks? I had been so hell bent on keeping this man far away from me, and here I was talking about kids with him. My future. A future I wasn’t really sure about since my father was bound and determined to undermine my life in Montana.